Riverworks

The budding renaissance of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, a Chester County borough settled in 1732 and legendary for its prosperous factories and mills, is now in full bloom. In 2016, the respected personal finance website Nerdwallet ranked it the third best town in Pennsylvania for young families, a telling and powerful follow-up to an earlier Philadelphia Magazine assessment that it is one of the metropolitan area’s “10 Awesome Neighborhoods To Call Home.”

Riverworks, Toll Brothers Apartment Living’s new luxury community in the borough, is strategically positioned along two picturesque waterways—the French Creek and Schuylkill River—on the site of the Phoenix Iron Company that lent the town its name. It not only builds on the borough’s celebrated assets, but also offers lifestyle facilities that give the community a new standard in contemporary living.

Riverworks also capitalizes on the emergent real estate trend of “surban communities,” which will attract the most U.S. households from now through 2026, according to a new Urban Land Institute report Demographic Strategies for Real Estate. “Surban communities offer the most desired features of urban and suburban living,” according to ULI.

MCA’s mandate was to fully outfit Riverworks’ clubhouse, public areas and model home interiors with future residents current and future needs in mind. With industrial-inspired architecture that takes its cues from the historic iron mill formerly on the site, Riverworks features astutely designed studio, 1- and 2-bedroom apartments that sport extra-high ceilings and oversized windows. It also boasts an expansive, architecturally captivating clubhouse that houses a resort-quality interactive fitness center and outdoor pool; an amenity-rich resident lounge with a sleek kitchen and fully stocked game room; an outdoor movie theater and more.

In the clubhouse, MCA used handsome, streamlined furnishings upholstered in plush velveteen, crisp linen and supple leather, complemented with rich reclaimed wood tables, benches and wall treatments, to forge an earthy yet polished aesthetic. They designed and executed epic, site-specific murals in the game room and fitness center that pay homage to the community’s industrial beginnings, while at the same time give these spaces magnetic, yet meaningful, decorative dazzle.

In Riverworks’ model home interiors, MCA used sleek wood and metal contemporary furnishings and sumptuous textiles—all chosen to showcase possibilities and play to the units’ luxurious features, fixtures and finishes. These range from 9-foot-high ceilings and luxury tile floors and to stainless steel appliances and natural stone kitchen and bathroom countertops.